News boss fires back

Outgoing
News Ltd
chief executive
John Hartigan
has rejected claims his newspapers are biased and accused the federal government of hypocrisy.

He told the independent inquiry into media regulation yesterday the government had no business espousing democratic values when it flouted those same principles by overthrowing its elected leader.

“This, largely from the only people in Australia . . . who removed an elected prime minister without bothering with the democracy of an election," he told inquiry chairman Ray
Finkelstein
, QC.

The government was merely unpopular and looking for someone to blame, Mr Hartigan said.

“If it annoys politicians, it’s a sign we are doing our job properly."

He said the inquiry was based on three “demonstrably false" presumptions about the motives of News Ltd and its 2700 journalists and an internal review had uncovered no evidence of phone-hacking practices as in the UK.

Mr Hartigan said: “I say now what I said then – we do not hack phones nor do we pay bribes. Those that were happy to join the chorus of accusers back then, months ago, are now deafening in their silence. They didn’t put up and now they have shut up. Why? Because they know it doesn’t happen."

News Ltd supports an expanded role for the Australian Press Council to police print and broadcast media but says membership should remain voluntary and funding independent.

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But a former host of ABC-TV’s Media Watch program and defamation lawyer
Stuart Littlemore
, QC, told the inquiry a statutory body was needed to police journalism.

He said other professions “accept the idea of regulation because of the public interest . . . If [journalists] are not prepared to have the public interest determined and enforced, then no more of this twaddle about the ‘public’s right to know’."